Technology resources for the K-12 classroom

Forms

The built-in quizzing feature for Google Forms is getting great reviews. A form can now automatically grade questions and provide students with feedback after each question, including links to videos or websites. The video below provides an introduction to these features.

Google Forms has a powerful data validation feature that can control how forms behave. The articles below describe how to use this functionality, and provide examples of how you can apply validation rules in your classroom.

You made a Google Form, but you want control over who can complete it. This video demonstrates how you can restrict your Google Form to either a specific list of users or only allow access to the form via a password.

gMath is a handy mathematical expression builder for Google Docs, Sheets and Forms. that lets you create complex expressions and graphs with ease. The following videos demonstrate how to use this handy tool.

Google Forms – student assessment

Google Docs – student worksheets

Google Sheets – worksheets and quick quizzes

gMath Help – In case your question about gMath wasn’t answered in these videos, there is additional information at the manufacturer’s site.

CECA Pre-conference: October 25, 2015.

Harness the power of Google’s notification feature to automatically receive email alerts when someone submits your Google form or survey, and use Gmail’s filtering capability to organize these emails for easy access.

Accessing the form’s data file

Create a Google Form

Open the associated Google Sheets file for the form either by clicking on it in Drive or:

Open the form

Select “Responses” from the menu

Select “View responses“

Set notification rules in Google Sheets

Within Google Sheets, select Tools > Notification rules…

A window will open to let you set notification rules. Choose:

“A user submits a form” from the notify me at section

“Email-right away” if you want an email for every form submission or “Email-daily digest” if you prefer to receive a single email each day which contains all the submissions.

Create a filer in Gmail to organize emails

To create a filter in Gmail to group form submission emails:

Open one of the auto generated emails in Gmail

Select More > Filter messages like these

Leave the default choices on the first screen of the pop-up window and select Create Filter with this Search link

Put a check mark next to the “Apply the label” and choose your label from the list (you can also choose New label if you have not already created the label).

Press Save

Press Create Filter

Now every time someone submits the form you will get an email and it will automatically go into the folder/label you just created.

Lots of teachers are asking questions about using Flubaroo to grade assessments. It’s a great tool. Flubaroo is an add-on for Google Sheets that must be installed from the Chrome store (super easy). (Google Sheets is Google’s spreadsheet program which is similar to Excel).

This is how it works:

You create an assessment using Google Forms.

Students complete the form/survey, and then Google automatically records the responses in a spreadsheet that it creates in your Google Drive.

You add a row to your spreadsheet with the correct answers for your assessment.

You can have more than one correct answer

Answers are exact matches, so Flubaroo works best with multiple choice, true/false type questions. You can use text boxes, but realize that US does not equal USA or United States or any other combination. Flubaroo uses a letter by letter match and they must be identical.

Tell Flubaroo to grade the assignment and in just a few moments it will create a new worksheet in your spreadsheet with a summary of the data.

You’re done! When you get some practice with this, you can go from students completing an assessment to a graded assessment in under a minute. Grades still need to be entered into Powerschool manually. Consider it for entrance/exit surveys.

This intro video (3:14) explains how to get started with Flubaroo. If you have additional questions, I can always come to your PLC meetings. Just ask.

I consider Forms the unsung hero of Google Apps. Users tend to get stuck in the Google Docs world and may not even realize this program exists. Forms is a very useful program with many classroom applications.

If you want to explore Forms on your own, this video (9:05) will get you started, but I feel it leaves out some important information that can make Forms easier for you. My suggestion, poke around Forms for a short while (like 10 minutes), and then contact me before you roll-out your first classroom activity so we can fine tune things a bit. I’m sure you’re going to like this program.